Other than a vague mention of budgets and staffing decisions, the only regret Conservative campaign adviser Jenni Byrne acknowledged on a recent podcast was that she wished they’d seen what was happening in Pierre Poilievre's riding before he lost his seat.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
When Jenni Byrne appeared on the Beyond a Ballot podcast recently, reporters handily strip-mined the hour-long interview for key news tidbits from the first public remarks that Pierre Poilievre’s campaign manager has made since her party lost the April election.
But hidden between those crunchy bits of intel, there’s something even more intriguing: the story Ms. Byrne wants to tell about that strange election in which her party’s strategy was loudly criticized from some Conservative corners.
As always when political operatives talk in their outside voices, this story seems to have multiple audiences. It reads as a rebuttal to her critics, a menu of talking points for her defenders and the story she and Mr. Poilievre might tell themselves in the mirror, all wrapped up in one highly strategic message drop.
Ms. Byrne detailed a huge shift in the Conservative voter coalition that started even before Mr. Poilievre became leader, describing what she called “the COVID voter” in explicitly generational terms.
“And so here you have, I wouldn’t say wealthy, but comfortable boomers. For the most part, they live in their paid-off homes − and nothing wrong with that,” she said, adding that these people got through the pandemic ordering their groceries and booze online, and if they had to wave to their grandkids from the driveway, “they were fine.”
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“And then on the other side, you had kids − and by kids, I mean 20-year-olds − who are living in a two-bedroom, 600-square-foot apartment with no air conditioning,” Ms. Byrne said, adding that when those people tried to sit in a park with a beer, they were chastised.
She wept at one point during the interview as she described meeting a woman at an event who wanted to buy a party membership with cash because she’d lost her job for refusing a COVID vaccine and didn’t have a credit card. She told Ms. Byrne that she was living in her car and listened to Mr. Poilievre’s videos every night.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ms. Byrne described Mr. Poilievre’s constituency as the “Zyn voter,” referring to the nicotine pouches people tuck between their lip and gums, which have become a masculine, conservative, hustle-culture touchstone.
She also talked about a twentysomething friend of her family who works as an auto mechanic and told her that he and his co-workers play Mr. Poilievre’s videos in the garage while they work.
Ms. Byrne made it clear that this generational split − an inversion of a traditional Conservative sweet spot with older voters − is the “anchor” of the party from here on out under Mr. Poilievre. She linked that to their message and policy focus during the election campaign, which drew widespread criticism that they were missing the moment while Donald Trump’s threats were blotting out the sun.
“I would point out we had a very good campaign message: affordability, cost of living, housing. They appealed very much to the new, younger voter,” she said.
“It’s not that they weren’t cognizant about what’s going on with Donald Trump, but it wasn’t affecting their lives. They didn’t have the luxury to vote on Donald Trump because they were sick of living in their parents’ basement.”
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Ms. Byrne argued that if you were in government somewhere, like Ontario Premier Doug Ford or Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, you had levers you could pull to respond to Mr. Trump, but for Mr. Poilievre and his party, that made no sense.
“From a practical point of view, I don’t know what we would have said every day.
This argument falls apart pretty quickly, if you squint even a little. Ms. Byrne’s party was auditioning to be the government – until everything flipped upside down, they were the government in waiting – and generally what you talk about every day in an election campaign are your plans to meet the big issues of the day.
Other than a vague mention of budgets and personnel decisions, the lone campaign regret Ms. Byrne acknowledged was that she wished they’d “seen what was happening in Pierre’s riding” before he lost his seat.
And there is the problem with the story Ms. Byrne is telling about the election: it’s a little too perfect.
All of it − every calculation they made, every strategy they stuck to, every criticism they ignored, every constituency they courted and every other constituency they dismissed as a lost cause − was, in her telling, flawless. This is the story of a winning campaign that lost only because the rest of the world misunderstood the assignment. It’s the story of a campaign that’s going to continue until everyone else comes to their senses.
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“It’s almost like she’s trying to convince − and he’s trying to convince − everybody that this was a once-in-a-generation storm,” said Jim Armour, managing partner at Summa Strategies and director of communications to Preston Manning, Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper. “‘We built this dream house, we built our perfect house, and then suddenly something happened, this terrible storm happened that was completely outside of our control. Couldn’t see it coming, couldn’t do anything to prepare.’”
That’s pretty much what the Liberals thought when Mr. Harper won and what the Conservatives thought when Justin Trudeau won, Mr. Armour adds, and each of those freak storms lasted close to a decade. It’s a seductive argument that leaves you frozen in place.
“If you don’t think that you’ve done anything wrong, and that it was just a once-in-a-generation storm, you’re not going to change anything,” he said. “You’re going to go into the next campaign running pretty well the same campaign, except maybe changing up the limerick − whatever rhymes with electric vehicle.”
There was one more thing Ms. Byrne said on that podcast that was very interesting.
“One Liberal said to me, ‘If you guys had another week, you probably would have pulled it off,’” she said.
And then she added a disclaimer: “No campaign is perfect, at all. Anyone that says they’ve run a perfect campaign either has no idea what they’re talking about or [they’re] lying.”